New RAM installation & Memtest faults

dmx07

dmx07

dmx07

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Joined
11 Apr 2007
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337
Hi all,

I recently bought 2Gbs of 2nd hand Ram for my work pc which I installed the other day. In the first couple of days I had 3 or 4 crashes on a previously very stable pc.

I ran memtest last night (on all 4Gbs) and had some errors this morning.

My question is thus:
Could memtest errors be caused by incorrect voltages or timings or do you think its more likely that a module is faulty?

By the way, timings on the labels of each dimm are 5-5-5-12 but cpuz reports 5-5-5-18...

thanks in advance..

Motherboard: Asus P5k SE
Ram: Corsair CMX1024-6400 (X4)
Vista 32 (I realise that I will only get to use 3.2Gbs or thereabouts)
Intel Q6600 at stock
 
Last edited:
Double check the voltage in the BIOS and see what it is set at, on each module there should be a sticker stating memory timing's & voltage.
Increase the voltage if not already set usually there around 2.1v and run mem test again.
 
RJC said:
Double check the voltage in the BIOS and see what it is set at, on each module there should be a sticker stating memory timing's & voltage.
Increase the voltage if not already set usually there around 2.1v and run mem test again.
Click to expand...

Yellowbeard said:
You'll also typically need some extra memory controller voltage to be stable with 4 modules. Try the 1.3v - 1.4v range.
Click to expand...

Great, many thanks.
 
RJC said:
Double check the voltage in the BIOS and see what it is set at, on each module there should be a sticker stating memory timing's & voltage.
Increase the voltage if not already set usually there around 2.1v and run mem test again.
Click to expand...

The ram specifies 1.9V so I set it to that as well as set the timings manually. I'll try a voltage increase tonight as the test I did at stock voltage last night gave me errors. Is there any way to understand the Memtest error messages!?

Yellowbeard said:
You'll also typically need some extra memory controller voltage to be stable with 4 modules. Try the 1.3v - 1.4v range.
Click to expand...
I couldnt find this setting in the BIOS I'm afraid, the board doesn't seem to have too many options - it was a bargain board just for office use.

I've also removed one of the dimms so now running 3Gbs to see if that makes a difference. The pc did run all day yesterday with 4Gbs installed and only crashed as I was shutting it down.

I'll get to the bottom of it!! :D
 
RJC said:
Check for MCH voltage in the BIOS, This is what needs to be raised.
Click to expand...

Will do, thanks.

Haven't had much luck today, ended up having to remove the extra dimm so was running with the original setup of 2Gbs. Once I'd done that I had about 5 blue screens (irq is equal to....)

I've just reset cmos as I was thinking that my settings had a part to play with the instability and even though I loaded defaults it still crashed.

I'm going to memtest my original 2Gbs tonight so t least I know they are ok, then tomorrow I'll test the 2 new dimms, maybe run them for a day or 2 by themselves, then try again with 3 or 4Gbs!

Lengthy process! :(
 
If the memory is of 2 different revision or ver numbers, then you may simply have 2 kits of memory that are not going to run well together. That's one of the issues with mixing memory in some cases. The info is on the stickers.
 
Yellowbeard said:
If the memory is of 2 different revision or ver numbers, then you may simply have 2 kits of memory that are not going to run well together. That's one of the issues with mixing memory in some cases. The info is on the stickers.
Click to expand...

They are all version 5.2 although the other number which I guess is the revision number is different.

Is the revision number the 2nd number shown in this pic (08020191)?

If so then yes, I have 2x 2Gb kits with different revisions. I didn't think this would be an issue to be honest.
 
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